LXXIV PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



The authority of Sir James Frazer in regard to all matters 

 concerned with cultural anthropology is so pre-eminent that, in 

 connexion with this question of deliberate action, I venture to 

 quote two more short passages from his monumental work on 

 Totemism and Exogamy. In the first he says,(^) "It is hardly 

 too much to affirm that no other human institution ibears the 

 impress of deliberate design stamped on it more clearly than the 

 exogamous classes of the Australian"; and, in the second, (^) 

 " The truth is that all attempts to trace the origin and growth of 

 human institutions without the intervention of human intelligence 

 and will are radically vicious and foredoomed to failure." 



When our knowledge of the organization of the tribes from 

 the fundamental point of view of counting descent is plotted down 

 in map form (Map A), the striking feature is that Australia is 

 very clearly divided into East and West. On the East there is 

 female and, on the West, male descent, with the exception in each 

 case of what may be called abnormal tribes inhabiting coastal 

 land. Such information as we yet have of the organization of the 

 tribes of the York Peninsula, and of the southern part of Western 

 Australia,- and of the south-western part of South Australia, is 

 both too insufficient and too unsatisfactory to base any safe con- 

 clusions upon, but the main division into East and West stands 

 out clearly. 



In association with the system of exogamy and class organiza- 

 tion there has been developed a most complicated and yet homo- 

 geneous system of counting relationship, including in this both 

 consanguinity as known to us and the far wider relation of kinship 

 as understood by the Australian aboriginal. 



There are in regard to this two features of special interest. 

 The first is that, as a result of it, every individual member of a 

 tribe stands in a definite relationship to every member, not only 

 of his or her own tribe, but to those of every other tribe with 

 whom he or she may come in contact. The second is, perhaps, of 

 still greater interest in view of the fact that we may expect to 

 find amongst Australian savages relics of customs associated with 

 early stages of the development of human society. This second 

 feature is that all terras of relationship, save a very few, are 

 group, and not individual, tenns. Even the very few special indi- 

 vidual terms that exist retain in part the form of group terms. 

 These terms of kinship and relationship are widely different from, 

 though they include, those of consanguinity as kno-vsoi amongst 

 ourselves. Kinship is a matter of law, or,' amongst savages, of 

 custom. Consa nguinity is physiological, and the two are only 



/•) Sir J. E. Frazer, op. cit., vol. 4, page 106. 

 (") Sir J. E. Frazer, op. cit., vol. 1, page 281. 



